Chapter 12 - Escape Under the River
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The descent down the pitch-black chimney shaft was a nightmare of echoing gunfire and falling soot.
Above them, Lorenzo and two of Drago’s capos stayed behind on the third-floor landing for sixty seconds to lay down a blistering wall of submachine-gun fire down the main stairwell—before triggering two incendiary smoke grenades in the master bedroom and dropping down into the secret wardrobe shaft right behind them, bolting the steel firewall plate shut from the inside.
Halfway down the vertical brick chimney, Lorenzo kicked open the rusted iron inspection hatch that led into the old laundry chute, sliding straight down into the west wing basement ten yards from the blue cellar door.
Wait—standing in the dim sub-cellar corridor outside the open blue door, still tied to the wooden chair where they had left her ten minutes ago, was Genevieve!
And coming down the main basement concrete stairs at the far end of the hall were four black-masked mercenaries with laser sights sweeping the gloom!
"Genevieve!" one of the mercenaries barked into his throat mic as his red laser beam hit the widow’s black silk dress. "Command said zero survivors—including the contact!"
Genevieve’s eyes went wide with horror behind her gag as the mercenary raised his suppressed carbine to execute her on the spot.
Lorenzo emerged from the laundry chute room behind them like a phantom, firing two bursts from his MP5 that dropped all four black-ops shooters onto the stone steps in a hail of brass casings.
Instead of leaving Genevieve in the corridor to be shot by the second wave—or bringing the traitor with them into the escape tunnel—Lorenzo sliced her wrist ropes with his combat knife and shoved a fallen pistol with a single bullet left in the chamber into her bleeding hand.
"Your friends from Washington just cancelled your deal, Genevieve," Lorenzo snarled as he ushered Clara, Lily, Rico, and old man Drago inside the blue stone room and slammed the heavy oak door shut from the inside, throwing the heavy interior iron deadbolt that had rusted against the wall for thirty years. "Keep them busy in the hallway if you want to live another five minutes!"
Inside the dark stone cell, Lorenzo and Drago’s men overturned the heavy antique Singer sewing table.
Beneath it, covered in two inches of grey dust and mortar rubble, was an octagonal cast-iron sewer grate stamped 1924.
Using the steel crowbar, Lorenzo and Rico pried the heavy iron grate up off its stone lip. Immediately, the cold, fishy smell of the Hudson River rushed up into the cramped cell, accompanied by the hollow echo of lapping water ten feet below.
A rusted iron ladder led down into a four-foot-wide brick storm culvert where ankle-deep water flowed toward the river.
"Drago, Rico—down first!" Lorenzo ordered as bullets began hammering against the thick blue oak door from the corridor outside, followed by the screams of Genevieve firing her single round before being cut down in the crossfire. "Catch the child!"
Clara lowered Lily down into Vittorio Drago’s waiting arms in the tunnel below, then swung her own legs over the stone rim and climbed down into the freezing water.
Above them, a mercenary slapped a magnetic breaching strip onto the outside of the blue cellar door.
"Lorenzo, jump!" Clara cried, looking up as a hiss of burning fuse echoed through the oak timber.
Lorenzo dropped through the stone manhole and pulled the five-hundred-pound cast-iron grate halfway back over the opening just as the breaching charge detonated above them.
BOOM!
The blast blew the blue wooden door to splinters and collapsed half the weakened limestone ceiling of the cellar room directly on top of the iron grate—sealing the shaft behind three tons of fallen rock and blinding dust!
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Coughing in the pitch blackness of the brick culvert beneath the bedrock, Clara frantically felt through the swirling smoke and freezing water until her hands hit solid, broad muscle covered in wet Kevlar.
"I'm here," Lorenzo’s voice rasped out of the dark, his strong hand closing warm and steady over hers before clicking on a red tactical headlamp. "Nobody’s following us through three tons of limestone. Move toward the river!"
